Simply China - I

This entry is a hodge-podge of photos that don't fit into a theme but are interesting, at least interesting to the author.  

A banana protector.  Amazingly it works very well.  Maybe they have these
in America but this guy hasn't seen one...or be caught using one.

We visited a Pearl market where they allowed us to select a fresh water pearl.
Each of us made a guess at how many pearls were in the one we selected.  Baba won with '8' in one oyster!

Yangmei in a Hutong kitchen.  A hutong is the community-housing in China.
She looks very comfortable with that pot.

The boys in a taxi.  With 7 of us in Beijing we had to get two taxis everywhere.
No seatbelts in the majority of the taxis...

Caomei.  This is what they do when there is nothing on TV.
There are some benefits of having only 12 channels!

Grandma in our dining room.  Those are moon cakes on the table and cheap beer.
That liter bottle is about 50 cents.

The moon cakes are a little like a fruit cake but there are all types of flavors.
These were a company gift.

Yugege loves his local hat.

Local teenager posing stylishly in her Chinese garb on the great wall.
She flashed the peace sign  afterward, which would have also been a fun photo...

Chinese Touch Rugby

Yugege is an athlete so he has played many sports in his short 10 year life.  But playing rugby was never something that Baba would ever think he would see his son doing.  Rugby is one sport that most Americans just don't understand, me included.  Just like many non-American don't understand American Football, Rugby has some rules that are just not obvious.  Touch-rugby is even a little more challenging to understand.

A horrible rainy day.  Team practice before the match.

 The rules as I picked up were the following:
- Single touch is a tackle
- After a tackle the other team has to give them 5 meters to start the next play.
- You start the next play by rolling the ball backwards with your foot to the initial passer.
- You have to lateral the ball to others on your team
- If you don't lateral then you turn is over
- If you drop the ball then you turn is over.

- You get 6 tries to move the ball down the field and get the ball into the 'endzone'.
- A score is called a "try".
- If you don't get a try after 6 'plays' then the other team gets the ball.

The games were at the Concordia field.

Here is a play were the player is running straight with the ball.

Yugege is No. 4.  He is lateraling it to No. 10.

Yugege is lateraling again.

Ying's at the Summer Palace

Summer palace was a getaway location for the Emperor, now it's a tourist destination.  This was part of our trip to Beijing.  

Caomei at the entrance

Baba's Parents

Whole clan at Summer Palace.  

Filled with Lotus plants in the water and temples.

The is a long corridor with ornate paintings over every square centimeter.

Some pagoda on a hill.

Very ornate detail on each pagoda.

A famous cement boat.  I don't think it moves, it's just for show.

We took a dragon boat across the lake with every one else,

Ying's on the Great Wall

There are two holidays in China that allow all citizens to have a full week off from work and school.  These holidays are the mid-autumn festival and the China national day.  Mid-autumn festival is a fall lunar festival and the national day represents the day that China became the People's Republic of China from Chairman Mao in 1969.  

Baba's parents arrived on the Thursday before the holiday week and two days later were on a fast-train to Beijing (5 hours and $85).  The activities in Beijing included:

The Great Wall of China;

The Summer Palace;

The Bird's Nest and The Cube (Beijing Olympics);

The antique market;

The pearl market;

The hutongs (old homes);

The Forbidden City;

Tianemen Square; and

The City Wall museum.

I'll add more photos from the other sites but this entry will be about the Great Wall trip.  We went to the location of Mutianyu, which is about 1.5 hours away from Beijing and is known to be much less crowded than the closer points.  It was a beautiful day but the stairs were too much for my mom.  

Chairlift to the wall

The Wall travelers.  The Yings with Baba's parents.

They start you coming down the wall stairs.

We agreed that the Great Wall of China would be better named the 'Great Stairs of China'.

Then they have you go up this very steep sloping stairs.  Grandma had to pause after this climb area.  The rest of us went to the end of the restored area.  

A look back from the highest point.

Yangmei, Yu gege, Yanyuan and Caomei.

This is Mongolia.  Yuyuan and I had to trek into Mongolia (off the wall) without a passport to go take a pee.  We learned that Mongolian bathrooms are really smelly...

These were the steep stairs behind them.

This slide was the way down the hill!  It was great fun.

Here is the token picture with the toothless Mongolians.  For $3, it was worth it.

Gone Fishin' in Shanghai

We are coming from Florida where at least one fish is caught on every fishing outing.  It didn't matter whether it was fresh water, salt water or off the beach we knew how to fish, what to use as bait and how to reel it in. So, here we come to Shanghai and nothing of fishing seems the same.  The locals use 15m bamboo poles, many without reels, and just flip the line out from there.  There is a very light bobber on the line that they watch and tug when it moves the slightest bit.  Bait consists of a dust that you add water to and must have some type of flavor that the fish like.

Yu Gege fishing at Century Park

Honestly, it is just as well that we haven't been so lucky.  If we did catch fish then I would have had to clean and cook them.  We have eaten these as bought and clean at the local market and they have a very 'fishy' taste like the water.

We bought at collapse-able rod and some tackle that we
had to learn how to use.  

Yanyuan with the only fish caught on this day.  

Century Park allows fishing for 20 RMB ($3.5) for a chair,
worms and the ability to fish in the pond.

We were with about 75 - 100 others fishing but we were
definitely not doing it right.

These were not our fish...  But someone did well.  He had
to pay by the kilogram for these - that's the other 'catch' to
this type of fishing.

Here was a second day at a man-made fishing hole.  We didn't have to pay to enter but would have had to pay if we caught any fish.  Others did catch a few but we came up empty...

 

Chinese Food - Not like home

Mandarin Squirrel Fish - The best fish we've eaten in China (Suzhou)

The food is one of the most unique aspects of living in Shanghai.  The majority of the cuisine is Chinese but if you are craving a cheeseburger then you can get that too.  There is all types of fish, all kinds of known and unknown vegetables, many mushrooms, noodles and as you can guess, plenty of rice.

The Chinese don't have a concept of 'low-fat', which is good since there is a much better balance of carbs, fat, protein  etc.

Ayi Noodles - Home cookin' and Yangmei's favorite!

They eat the whole animal including the pig nose.  No, we haven't tried this yet.

All-you-can-eat Marriott breakfast.  Chocolate covered pancakes!

As you can see, fish is always served whole.  Be very careful of the bones!

Look at Yanyuan with those chopsticks!